How can NASA physicist and climatologist James E. Hansen, writing in the New York Times today, “say with high confidence” that recent heat waves in Texas and Russia “were not natural events” but actually “caused by human-induced climate change”?

It wasn’t all that long ago that respected MIT atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel flatly refuted the notion that you can pinpoint global warming as the cause of an extreme weather event. “It’s statistical nonsense,” he told PBS.

For decades, a small group of scientific dissenters has been trying to shoot holes in the prevailing science of climate change, offering one reason after another why the outlook simply must be wrong.

Simply put, this ocean acidification news coming out of Oregon State University is huge. Scientists have solved the mystery of what's been killing baby oysters at the Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery, proving that elevated carbon dioxide is the culprit.

It's the first concrete evidence that ocean acidification–-a phenomenon caused by pollution from cars, coal plants and other machines that burn fossil fuel-–is harming commercially valuable species and Northwest businesses.

The global temperature increase rate has been “remarkable” during the previous four decades, according to the preliminary summary. The global temperature has increased since 1971 at an average estimated rate of 0.166°C per decade compared to the average rate of 0.06 °C per decade computed over the full period 1881-2010.

A common assumption is that rising global temperatures will increase the spread of malaria -- the deadly mosquito-borne disease that affects millions of people worldwide. But a study out today in Biology Letters finds that warmer temperatures seem to slow transmission of malaria-causing parasites, by reducing their infectiousness.

The hype surrounding a new paper by Roy Spencer and Danny Braswell is impressive (see for instance Fox News); unfortunately the paper itself is not. News releases and blogs on climate denier web sites have publicized the claim from the paper’s news release that “Climate models get energy balance wrong, make too hot forecasts of global warming”. The paper has been published in a journal called Remote sensing which is a fine journal for geographers, but it does not deal with atmospheric and climate science, and it is evident that this paper did not get an adequate peer review. It should not have been published.

I’m a “climate change convert.” Like many of my fellow conservatives, I was traditionally skeptical of the science supporting the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis. Today, I am skeptical no longer. Like conservative blogger D.R. Tucker, on this issue, I was ultimately “defeated by facts.”[1] Today, converging arguments have persuaded me that AGW is real and that we must take action to prevent it.

Reading the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was the critical moment in D.R. Tucker’s conversion process. In my own case, I finally reached a point where I could no longer in good conscience deny the implications of the cumulative weight of so large a body of evidence.

Submarine explorers planting Russian flags under the North Pole. Military tension between NATO and Russia. US diplomats manoeuvring in the wings. Aircraft carriers lurking and strike fighters changing hands.

Sound like something from a James Bond plot? Unfortunately it’s not.

New Wikileaks releases today have shown the Arctic oil rush is not just a threat to the environment and our climate, but also to peace.

In what may be the greatest environmental disaster in the nation's history, the supertanker TI Oceania docked without incident at the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port Monday and successfully unloaded 3.1 million barrels of dangerous crude oil into the United States.

As the world's oceans warm, their massive stores of dissolved carbon dioxide may be quick to bubble back out into the atmosphere and amplify the greenhouse effect, according to a new study.

A team of UC Berkeley physicists and statisticians that set out to challenge the scientific consensus on global warming is finding that its data-crunching effort is producing results nearly identical to those underlying the prevailing view.

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project was launched by physics professor Richard Muller, a longtime critic of government-led climate studies, to address what he called "the legitimate concerns" of skeptics who believe that global warming is exaggerated.

"Our analysis confirms that the signals of warming are as strong as they ever have been. Improving our understanding of the factors that affect short and long term trends is helping us to improve our predictions of the future," Vicky Pope, the Met Office's head of climate change advice, said in a statement.

"Anyone who is an engineer or scientist can understand what turned Anthony from a believer in anthropogenic global warming to a skeptic."

That's apparently money, influence, fun, and perhaps a little revenge.

Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development (FIELD), based in the United Kingdom, says small island nations and other threatened countries have the right and likely the procedural means to pursue an inter-state case before the United Nations' International Court of Justice.

"Some of these countries are getting increasingly desperate," Christoph Schwarte, the paper's lead author, said. With little movement toward a new global climate change treaty, he said, many leaders are looking for ways to make the United States and others understand the threats they face from rising sea levels, droughts and storm surges.

The recent move of developed countries especially the United States to include World Bank as the trustee of the New Global Climate Fund within the negotiation text of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is simply unacceptable, according to a debt watchdog.

The Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) said that the World Bank has no right to participate or take any role in climate financing because of its long history of climate change-inducing projects like coal and other fossil-based energy projects that accelerated the impacts of climate change.

Google Galileo: an individual whose knowledge of a scientific discipline is restricted to information sourced from Google, Wikipedia or other online sources (i.e. blogs). Within a period of a few weeks/months they feel confident to not only dismiss an entire discipline of science, but have gained the ability to "practice science" by commenting on online forums and constructing alternative theories using raw data obtained freely from public sources.

Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar yesterday dismissed the chief scientist of his ministry over past statements denying the tenets of evolution and global warming.

A rich collection of unfounded beliefs is a common characteristic of those who deny – despite the overwhelming scientific evidence – that man-made global warming is taking place. I've listed a few examples before, but I'll jog your memories.

Lord Monckton, whose lecture asserting that man-made climate change is nonsense has been watched by 4 million people, also maintains that he has invented a cure for Aids, multiple sclerosis, influenza and other incurable diseases.

[...]

Peter Taylor, the Daily Express's favourite climate change sceptic, has claimed that a Masonic conspiracy has sent a "kook, a ninja freak, some throwback from past lives" to kill him, and insisted that plutonium may "possess healing powers, borne of Plutonic dimension, a preparation for rebirth, an awakener to higher consciousness".

More than 500 years after Spanish priests brought wheat seeds to Mexico to make wafers for the Catholic Mass, those seeds may bring a new kind of salvation to farmers hit by global warming.

Melting glaciers, more humid air and eight other key indicators show that global warming is undeniable, scientists said on Wednesday, citing a new comprehensive review of the last decade of climate data.

Without addressing why this is happening, the researchers said there was no doubt that every decade on Earth since the 1980s has been hotter than the previous one, and that the planet has been warming for the last half-century.

Interactive tool layering climate data over Google Earth maps shows the impact of an average global temperature rise of 4C

Collected here are a selection of some of the hundreds of abusive and expletive-strewn emails sent to climate scientists revealed this week in the Guardian

Numerous media outlets seized on a dubious January London Sunday Times report which claimed that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) 2007 statement on Amazon rain forests was "unsubstantiated" and without scientific basis in order to attack the IPCC's credibility and global warming science in general. However, The Sunday Times has now retracted that claim, noting, "In fact, the IPCC's Amazon statement is supported by peer-reviewed scientific evidence." Will these media outlets follow suit?

It's a distressing sight but we'll have to get used to it: most of the world's prominent climate change deniers skewered on their own sword.

The weapon which has turned so cruelly against them is the revelation, paraded in triumph by the egregious fabulist Richard North in January, that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had "grossly exaggerated the effects of global warming on the Amazon rainforest". The panel's fourth assessment report had claimed that "up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation". Reduced rainfall could rapidly destroy the forests, which would be replaced with savannahs.

nearly all published climate scientists agree that human activity is driving climate change. Their findings are consistent with a 2009 survey of scientists' attitudes as well as a 2004 survey of the scientific literature on climate change. The Anderegg et al. paper comes on the heels of a series of NAS reports that underscore the reality of human-induced climate change and the need to respond.

WORLD Cup fever has infected even the usually staid German city of Bonn, where painfully slow international negotiations on climate change are starting to be enlivened by the appearance of yellow Bafana Bafana T-shirts.

Alf Wills, SA's lead negotiator, has already addressed a United Nations plenary session in full Bafana regalia.

South African delegates and observers alike will be kitted out in football shirts today for the opening match.

Wills is understood to be campaigning for proceedings to end by 3pm in time for the match.

No doubt he will be supported in this noble endeavour by the Mexican delegation.

Mozambican President Armando Guebuza warned in Nice on Tuesday that some African countries may fail to attain the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) as a consequence of climate change.

Drip by drip, the full story is emerging of last December's global diplomatic debacle in Copenhagen, when instead of setting the world on a new low carbon path and tackling climate change, 130 world leaders ended up with a weak deal and no prospect of a binding agreement for another 18 months.

The latest revelations come from the man at the very heart of the debacle, UN climate chief Yvo de Boer. Normally the model of a discreet and guarded international bureaucrat, his confidential letter of explanation to his colleagues, written only days after the meeting ended, displays a mix of bemusement, clarity and exasperation. "How could several years of negotiation and high level diplomacy be allowed to end up this way?", he asks.

Bolivian President Evo Morales is perhaps the most radical voice raised in opposition to climate change. During a visit to Finland, the Bolivian President continued his anti-climate change campaign.

An extremely rare "grolar bear"—a polar-grizzly bear hybrid—was shot and killed by an Inuit hunter in Canada's Northwest Territories last month.

Global warming has reportedly been driving grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis) farther north in search of food, bringing them into polar bear (U. maritimus) territory. Polar bears, meanwhile, are finding themselves stranded on land instead of their usual sea ice, bringing them into contact with the grizzlies.

File this under "stories that shouldn't be news, but are": Three new reports by the highly respected National Research Council, a subsidiary of the National Academy of Sciences, argue that climate change is real and driven by human influences.

Environment ministers from Brazil, South Africa, India and China met in Cape Town to discuss on how to speed up a process of finalising a global agreement that would require rich nations to cut carbon emissions and reduce global warming.

Evo Morales says talks will give a voice to world's poorest and encourage governments to be ambitious after Copenhagen

An extra 2,000 people converged on Bonn again last week. This "small town in Germany", as the novelist John le Carré once immortalized it, is the home of the UNFCCC – the unwieldy acronym for the United Nations Climate Secretariat.

It's time for the next round of haggling over climate change –talks to prepare the talks, to prepare the talks…. and it's hard to work up a lot of enthusiasm after the Copenhagen debacle and all the negative press the climate scientists are getting (deservedly an undeservedly). No wonder UN climate chief Yvo de Boer is "chucking in the towel" and moving jobs this summer.

The need for a new global climate deal is "greater than ever", according to developing country delegates speaking at the opening of UN climate talks

Scientific candour, not polar bears and submerged cities, has helped my channel, Potholer54, to 27,000 subscribers

"What I like about sceptics is that in good science you need critics that make you think: 'Crumbs, have I made a mistake here?' If you don't have that continuously, you really are up the creek. The good sceptics have done a good service, but some of the mad ones I think have not done anyone any favours. You need sceptics, especially when the science gets very big and monolithic."

A letter signed by over 250 American scientists defends the quality of the science and the soundness of the IPCC process. They rightly - if belatedly - assert that the significance of these errors has been "greatly exaggerated by many sensationalist accounts" in the media. They propose strengthening the IPCC's quality-control mechanism in order to minimize the chance of future errors. If and when errors do emerge, the scientists say, they should be promptly and fully addressed on the internet. In a gutsy attempt to join the 21st century, they even suggest using a website to respond to erroneous reports of errors (read: disinformation): "we cannot let misperceptions fester anymore than errors go uncorrected."

"I think this is like a drag net, just to try and catch everyone whose name happens to be on this list. It's guilt by association and I thought those days were over 50 years ago," said Michael Oppenheimer, of Princeton University, who is on the list of 17 scientists. "It looks like a McCarthyite tactic: pull in anyone who had anything to do with anyone because they happened to converse with some by email, and threaten them with criminal activity."

[...]

Rick Piltz, a former official in the US government climate science programme who now runs the Climate Science Watch website, said Inhofe and others were getting in the way of scientific work. "Scientists who are working in federal labs are being subjected to inquisitions coming from Congress," he said. "There is no question that this is an orchestrated campaign to intimidate scientists."

It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.

That how Al Gore's op-ed big Sunday NY Times op-ed begins.

China said on Sunday it will spell out greenhouse gas emissions goals and monitoring rules for regions and sectors in its next five-year plan, with monitoring to show it is serious about curbing emissions.

Emission cuts pledges made by 60 countries will not be enough to keep the average global temperature rise at 2 degrees Celsius or less, modeling released on Tuesday by the United Nations says.

Anyone following the recent string of articles in the mainstream press attacking the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) may have entertained a sneaking suspicion that the hidden hand of the climate denial lobby was at work behind many of them. That suspicion, it turns out, is exactly right – the fingerprints of the deniers are all over several of the key stories.

The Kyoto Protocol, which was negotiated in 1997, specified greenhouse gas emission targets for the developed Annex I countries. It also specified that the first "commitment period" would run from 2008 to 2012. With the protocol set to expire at the end of 2012, it was intended that the COP15 meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009, would finalize a new agreement. However, the failure of the conference to reach agreement on a new legally binding agreement has created great uncertainty about what, if anything, will replace the protocol after 2012. The COP16 conference will be held in Mexico in December 2010

It's not hard at all to get temperatures cold enough for snow in a world experiencing global warming. [...] the globe warmed 0.74°C (1.4°F) over the past 100 years. There will still be colder than average winters in a world that is experiencing warming, with plenty of opportunities for snow. [...] water vapor in the global atmosphere has increased by about 5% over the 20th century, and 4% since 1970. This extra moisture in the air will tend to produce heavier snowstorms, assuming it is cold enough to snow.

"The Age of Stupid," a 2009 docudrama set in 2055, asks why didn't we save Earth when we had the chance. "Stupid" was first conceived by Director Franny Armstrong as a documentary integrating themes of excessive consumption, war and climate change. Armstrong began developing the idea in 2002 and began shooting in 2004.

Much has been said and discussed about Pachauri. And no, this isn't to defend him. Far from it.

But this is about climate change and the debate surrounding it.

So who do we believe? Oil companies? Pachauri? IPCC? Scientists who think climate change is real? Scientists who are against.

Or, do we turn to people and places where the impact of climate change is felt?

But it will be met by the same old 'but it isn't climate change' from the denialist camp.

So, let's bring in the experts. Let's bring in the amazing powers of your own brain to work here. No data to refute. No scientific quarrels. Just some simple common sense. And since it is your brain, you would trust it more than the IPCCs of the world.

The well-timed release of the stolen CRU emails (a.k.a. Climategate) did much to enhance public awareness of self-appointed climate science auditor Steve McIntyre and his long-time co-author and promoter, economist Ross McKitrick. Indeed, the pair has finally recieved widespread coverage in their native Canada with a spate of mainstream profiles full of fawning admiration from  the CanWest newspaper chain, McLean's magazine and the Toronto Star. That's on top of new interest from the likes of Associated Press and CNN, along with coverage from the usual biased sources like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.

Underlining the need to move beyond the procedural controversies of Copenhagen Accord, UN Chief Ban Ki-moon has asked the world to implement the key elements of the document.

Referring to a non-binding document that was drafted on December 18 by a small group of countries including the BASIC nations (China, India, Brazil and South Africa), Mr. Ban said: "It is important that we have to follow-up and implement what has been agreed in Copenhagen."

this month, a peer-reviewed analysis of the temperature data was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research. The paper used Watt's station ratings to split all US weather stations into two categories: good (rating one or two) and bad (ratings three, four or five). The analysis then compared the raw, unadjusted data from the good and bad sites. In typical peer-reviewed understatement, the results were described as "counterintuitive". They were in fact, a great surprise to many. Poorly sited weather stations actually show a cooler trend compared to the good sites.

"These results do not in any way reduce or remove the need for solid action now to move toward a zero-carbon dioxide-emission economy. The results tell us that doing our utmost now might work very well if the most optimistic values of sensitivity are real, but that it is possible that nothing will work no matter how hard we try,"

Glaciers across the globe are continuing to melt so fast that many will disappear by the middle of this century, the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) said today.

The announcement of the latest annual results from monitoring in nine mountain ranges on four continents comes as doubts have been cast on how much climate scientists have exaggerated the problem of glacier melt, which is seen as a leading indicator of how much the planet is heating up.

A study at the University of California Irvine says that greenhouse gas emissions 'would be lower if lawns did not exist.'

As spring flowers bloom early and birds start to nest around balmy Vancouver, officials there have chartered a fleet of helicopters to fly in thousands of tons of snow for the Winter Olympics.

Without the emergency snowlift, which is also shipping in tons of snow in convoys of giant lorries, Olympic chiefs feared they might have to abandon the Games that have already cost £1.5 billion and are due to start in three weeks.

Meet the companies tackling nine of humanity's biggest problems -- and making millions saving us from ourselves.

Why are virtually all climate "sceptics" men?
The question first came to mind on the plane to Copenhagen last week while scanning The Guardian's feature on movers and shakers in the "sceptical" field.
So we go down their list... Bjorn Lomborg, Viscount Monckton, former TV presenter David Bellamy, British National Party leader Nick Griffin, Freakonomicsauthors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, Lord Lawson, social anthropologist Benny Peiser, geologist Ian Plimer, US Senator James Inhofe, Czech President Vaclav Klaus... all men

It is only a matter of time before the lobbyists who peddle climate change denial for their own political ends start to overstate the significance of this episode, and try to link it to the controversy surrounding the email messages hacked from the University of East Anglia.

[...]

But this does not change the strong evidence that many glaciers around the world, including in the Himalayas, are melting in response to the warming of the Earth.

Stunned by having been sidelined in the endgame of the Copenhagen world climate summit meeting, the European Union is debating how to regain influence in the fight against global warming.

Should the E.U., the world's largest trading bloc and economic area, respond to the policy setback and the diplomatic humiliation of the bare-minimum Copenhagen accord by playing Mr. Nice, Mr. Nasty, Mr. Persistent or Mr. Pragmatic?

[...]

The Mr. Nasty camp, led by France and the steel industry, argues that the E.U. has been naïve in its climate diplomacy.

It argues that Europe would gain more leverage by deciding to levy a carbon tax on imports from countries that apply lower emissions standards.

Pope Benedict XVI denounced the failure of world leaders to agree to a new climate change treaty in Copenhagen last month, saying Monday that world peace depends on safeguarding God's creation.

Distracted by the treadmill that is modern life, climate change is, for many, a distant, abstract, and enigmatic entity. For others however, the impact is very tangible indeed - so close to home, it's on their doorsteps -as these pictures from the Huffington Post reveal...

As soon as you point out that someone on the right has made misleading claims, you are accused of pursuing a witch-hunt or behaving like the Inquisition. The delicate sensibilities of rightwingers somehow forbid debate: contradict them, point out their mistakes and falsehoods, and you are immediately charged with persecution.

This is profoundly ironic, as the very people who make such charges — Melanie Phillips is a good example — spend the rest of their time waging war on political correctness.

The United States may be experiencing one of the coldest winters in decades, but things continue to heat up in the Southern Hemisphere. Science has obtained exclusive data from NASA that indicates that 2009 was the hottest year on record south of the Equator. The find adds to multiple lines of evidence showing that the 2000s were the warmest decade in the modern instrumental record.

People need to make basic changes in the way the live. Countries need to cooperate. Matters as seemingly intractable as population must be addressed. And the required changes must be economically efficient. Such a pathway exists and is achievable.

I was admitted into the European Journalism Center's blogging competition # 2, about climate change and COP15.

One of the themes I chose to focus on was new science. Therefore, I registered my column on TH! NK with ResearchBlogging.org. It resulted in five of my 38 articles being summaries of fresh research.

One can find many excellent summaries of research on ResearcBlogging.org - something which otherwise typically requires costly subscriptions to read. Below are brief summaries of my own articles, as well as a few recommendations for others'.

It turned out all right for me... Two of the research articles were selected for "Editor's Selection" on ResearcBlogging.org, one was featured on the TH!NK front page, one used on Change.org 's Global Warming blog ... and I ended up winning the TH!NK #2 ;-)

Indeed, George Monbiot mentioned two of the articles I wrote summaries of when he gave a speech at the alternative climate summit in Copenhagen. Let me start with those.

Predictions of irreversible, unavoidable climate changes

This paper sums up on those climatological predictions that are both a) "illustrative", b) adverse, c) irreversible, d) already occuring, e) evidently anthropogenic, f) based on well understood physical principles and g) agreed upon by many models.

While we have emitted CO2 into the atmosphere throughout our time as an industrialized species about 80% of it has actually been absorbed into the ocean. Because the ocean and the atmosphere is exchanging such gasses as CO2, always on the move towards a state of equilibrium. But now we have emitted so much carbon dioxide the ocean is beginning to slow down its uptake as it is full of it, so to speak. There is another consequence: If we remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the oceans will slowly start emitting it in stead of absorbing it. Thus, "normalization" will be slow.

It has two basic forecasts of unavoidable effects:

• The sea level will rise
• The sub-tropics will become drier

Limiting warming to 2°C: How much more can we drill, baby?

What's with this 2°C thing? Limiting global warming to just two degrees Celcius has become one of the concensus talking points - not too unrealistic politically, yet not impossible either.

This study is on how much the temperature will rise as more and more GHG is emitted. From one end of the model to the other. The result is a probability distribution. Therefore, you find yourself in yet another compromise: How high a risk you must accept? (For some reason the political response is "50%" which surprised Wael Hmaidan from Lebanon IndyAct a lot when he visited Copenhagen. See a video of his speech where he asks: "would you go across the street if there was a 50% risk of being hit by a car?")

Among the conclusions are...

"Emitting the carbon from all proven fossil fuel reserves would vastly exceed the allowable CO2 emission budget for staying below 2°C."

...and...

"Given the substantial recent increase in fossil CO2 emissions [...] policies to reduce global emissions are needed urgently if the 'below 2°C' target is to remain achievable."

George Monbiot's conclusion was (I also recorded a video of his speech) that if COP15 was serious, it wouldn't merely discuss a little CO2 tax. A serious COP should act on deciding which of the remaining oil reserves, we can afford to extract.

More CO2 a mixed blessing for farming

It is often optimistically postulated that future farmers' yields will be more bountiful due to 'carbon fertilization' via increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels. It is correct that CO2 is one of the main ingredients of photosynthesis and that more ingredients allows for more products. But there are also other ingredients to the formula plus a labyrinth of biochemical processes from field to food to consider.

A recent German three season "Free-Air" wheat study in 550 ppm CO2 came out with some results on the plus side:

• 11.8% more biomass of above ground biomass (stem and ears, not leaves)
• 10.4% higher yield

But it also gave some results on the negative side:

• Smaller grains (of lower market value)
• 7.4% grain protein concentration decrease
• Decreases in amino acid concentrations
• Changes in mineral compositions (ie potassium and lead increase; iron and silicon decrease)
• Sugar content increase
• Changes in dough characteristics

The growing plants were irrigated and fertilized - thus, under conditions where plant nutrients and water never limited growth. All future crops will not be that lucky: already drought is a major problem and is presumably only to increasingly cause wilting fields under global warming. Elevated levels of CO2 will not do any good to a 3rd world farmer with soils cracked and dry.

But in short: Plant Biology is not simple, it is complex. There are many studies and much information already - and we need more!

The last two academic papers I wrote about here be mentioned only briefly: The South Pole ice melting too and Food and climate change - save or doom the world while eating.

The South Pole is a continent. Ice formation and melting takes place in several ways, so it's not just like that to say if it melts or not. Therefore, the "deniers" have often propagandized with data from areas in a given period with formation of more ice. They can still do this if they continue to be dishonest, but this research is using measurements from NASA's GRACE satellites to show that overall, the South Pole is melting as expected.

The last article is a look at foods CO2 emissions. Not so surprising: Hold it with all the red steaks, stop eating trawled fish and things to be flown in from other parts of the world. Eat some locally produced chicken, herring, wheat, fruits, vegetables and such. And honey.

---

Keep an eye on the Climate Science category at ResearchBlogging.org, I do. A few recommendations:
* Oceans can't keep up with human emissions "Oceans are no longer absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere like they used to. Growing ocean acidity is slowing their ability to keep up as humans pump more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere."
* Settling Scores "According to weather station data, the U.S. experienced 291,237 record high maximum temperatures and 142,420 record low minimum temperatures between January 2000 and September 2009."
* the Methane Pulse "Methane (CH4) is a greenhouse gas which has heat retention capability 23 times of that of CO2. Soil methanogens are the chief global producers of methane."
* The Great Global Cooling Swindle "that there did seem to be a broad consensus in the 1970s... behind global warming. Not that there weren't a few papers discussing the next ice age as well, but these were few and far between"
* Africa in Arms? "Researchers have found a connection between warmer temperatures and civil conflicts in Africa, raising the possibility that climate change will heighten the risk of war on the continent."

Climate Gate a scandal? Yes, but only if someone takes it as a serious source of doubt on anthropogenic climate change. When 12 years old emails is everything deniers have to come up with, they have nothing to hang their delusion on.

Looking forward to even more science based discussion and much less scepticism in 2010.

an additional 2 degrees of global warming could commit the planet to 6 to 9 meters (20 to 30 feet) of long-term sea level rise. This rise would inundate low-lying coastal areas where hundreds of millions of people now reside. It would permanently submerge New Orleans and other parts of southern Louisiana, much of southern Florida and other parts of the U.S. East Coast, much of Bangladesh, and most of the Netherlands, unless unprecedented and expensive coastal protection were undertaken.

A new simulation of deciduous tree expansion into the Arctic region shows that the trees would block the highly reflective snow and increase cloud cover, causing the area to warm even faster than it already is.

Did Sen Jim Inhofe (R-OK) -- the leading global-warming skeptic in Congress, who has repeatedly called man-made global warming or even global warming itself a hoax, and accused scientists of manipulating data -- himself falsely represented poll data on American public opinion?

1894-95

Attempting to explain the ice ages, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius theorizes that changes in carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere may alter our climate. "It is unbelievable," Arrhenius notes, "that so trifling a matter has cost me a full year."

There's been a lot of talk recently about the "hacked climate emails." Long story, short: Hacker steals email, posts. Wingnuts take some lines out of context, claim they show a cover-up, cry conspiracy. Scientists refute, in detail. Media covers "controversy." Driven by talk radio and oil money, the whole thing escalates into a scandal.

From: ernst.kattweizel@redcar.ac.uk
Sent: 29th October 2009
To: The Knights Carbonic

Gentlemen, the culmination of our great plan approaches fast. What the Master called "the ordering of men's affairs by a transcendent world state, ordained by God and answerable to no man", which we now know as Communist World Government, advances towards its climax at Copenhagen. For 185 years since the Master, known to the laity as Joseph Fourier, launched his scheme for world domination, the entire physical science community has been working towards this moment.

the 16,200 churches and other buildings owned by the Church of England emit about as much carbon dioxide as the entire country of Gambia

Of course, if they don't go to church they probably play badminton in stead ;-)

The organizers from the European Journalism Centre have awarded five bloggers as winners of the first month and also three bloggers have now won a trip to the actual COP15 climate change summit in Copenhagen. However, let me advertise a couple more bloggers who seriously deserve the attention.

Daniel Nylin Nilsson

[Column | RSS | Website]
5th most active user overall, 3rd most active commenter. Highly competent blogging. Analyses the climate change debate like a knife cuts butter.

Lara Smallman

[Column | RSS | Website]
8th most active user overall, 5th most active poster. Aspiring documentary film-maker is productive, kind and overall insightful. Check it out.

Hemant Anant Jain

[Column | RSS | Website]
I already mentioned him last time I featured some TH!NKers here at Newsvine but... 9th most active poster and author of most of the most viewed and best posts. Don't miss it.

Some of the winners so far are good too. But the above are among the ones I don't miss. Honorable mention to Björn Obermann and Anna-Maria Penu, by the way.

Vitezslav Kremlik

[Column | RSS | Website]
Most active user overall, 4th most active poster, most active commenter. And the one I personally agree the least with. Recycles 10 year old "denier" theories and inadvertently promoted green causes better than I do myself with his smash hit blog post Eat this: There are NO LIMITS to growth!!!. Absolutely hilarious.

Lastly, of course, there is myself. I've been taking various approaches: registering with researchblogging.org and writing about science, infused opinion here and there, uploaded an excess of videos of NGOs talking and more. While my posts do get decent traffic, I haven't robbed the house yet, though.

Oh yeah... that award I mentioned TH!NK was nominated for last time I posted recommendations to Newsvine: TH!NK won it.

If you like a tasty slab of meat, make sure you place your orders soon. Pork chops will become soggier and paler as the world warms, say veterinary scientists, and steaks could become blander, leaner, darker and more prone to spoilage.

Global temperatures are increasing. Sea levels are rising. Ice sheets in many areas of the world are retreating. Yet there's something peculiar going on in the oceans around Antarctica: even as global air and ocean temperatures march upward, the extent of the sea ice around the southern continent isn't decreasing. In fact, it's increasing.

A photograph of a shrinking icecap that looks like 'mother nature in tears' is set to become a stark image of the dangers of global warming.

On August 6, 2001, President George W. Bush famously received an intelligence briefing entitled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." Thirty-six days later, al Qaeda terrorists did just that.

Scientists tell us we have a 10-year window -- if even that -- before catastrophic climate change becomes inevitable and irreversible. The threat is real, and time is not on our side.

Facts, as John Adams said, are stubborn things. Here are a few you need to know: Atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels have risen 38% in the industrial era, from 280 to 385 parts per million (ppm). Scientists have warned that anything above 450 ppm -- a warming of 2 degrees Celsius -- will result in an unacceptable risk of catastrophic climate change.

The truth is that the threat we face is not an abstract concern for the future. It is already upon us and its effects are being felt worldwide, right now. Scientists project that the Arctic will be ice-free in the summer of 2013. Not in 2050, but four years from now.

Make no mistake: catastrophic climate change represents a threat to human security, global stability, and -- yes -- even to American national security.

And yes, Tiger Woods lost, even though I called him an "all-climate player" after he won "the brown British Open" at drought-stricken Royal Liverpool in 2006 and the "Hottest Major of All Time." In fact, I had predicted "No doubt he'll some day win the 'wettest major of all time,' too" — but a bad draw and bad putting thwarted him, as I'll discuss at the end.

The future impacts of global warming may be twice as worse as we thought just a few years ago.

If current emissions trends continue, there's a very high probability that by century's end, the Earth's median surface temperature may increase 9.3 degrees F (5.2 degrees C) over average temperatures between 1981-2000, according to a team of MIT researchers .

even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.

"The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied," the experts wrote in an internal report compiled for the [Global Climate Coalition] in 1995.

The world's largest gathering of climate change deniers has convened in New York City for its annual confusion of climate and weather, science fact and fiction, and criticism of Al Gore as "evil," or at best well-meaning but wrong.

Get into an argument with a climate change sceptic, and sooner or later they'll trot out the old arguments about it being all due to cosmic rays, or the sun.

geophysicists have shown that should the West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse and melt in a warming world – as many scientists are concerned it will – it is the coastlines of North America and of nations in the southern Indian Ocean that will face the greatest threats from rising sea levels.

A $144 reward can encourage you to be a 'free-thinking' climate change denier at a US conference

Temperatures are warming throughout Antarctica, especially in winter and spring, according to new weather station and satellite data.

Tired of winter? Good news: Spring arrives an average of 1.7 days earlier now than it did in the first half of the 20th century, according to a new study.

Cities deep underwater, frozen continents, the collapse of global agriculture: so far, much of the discussion about climate change has focused on these distant, catastrophic effects of a superheated world. What's less talked about is how global warming is making itself felt already. Even the modest temperature rise we've already experienced has set in motion fundamental shifts—and the further warming we can expect in the next few decades has the potential to set off dramatic changes.

Record melting in northern Greenland and the widespread release of methane gas from formerly frozen deposits off the Siberian coast suggest that major changes are sweeping the Arctic, researchers say.

The American Museum of Natural History is one of the nation's most well-known, mainstream bastions for educating the public about the sciences. It's also one of New York City's major tourist draws.

Thus, it's telling that the museum has opted to open "Climate Change: The threat to life and a new energy future" right before New York's holiday tourist season. This suggests to me that the museum deems the science of human-caused global warming uncontrovertable...and that global warming's ongoing frisson of political controversy will not upset the fiscal apple cart of the crucial Thanksgiving-to-New Year's visitor season.

A British Court today acquitted six Greenpeace volunteers for attempting to shut down a coal-fired power plant in Kent on the grounds that they had a "lawful excuse" because the coal plant was causing so much property damage around the world due to global warming that it exceeded the property damage done through shutting operations of the coal plant.The Maidstone Crown Court heard testimony from NASA climate expert James Hansen, an Inuit leader from Greenland and the British Conservative Party's environment adviser. The jury was told that the Kingsnorth Power Plant emits 20,000 tons of CO2 every day - the same amount as the 30 least polluting countries in the world combined – and that the British Government had advanced plans to build a new coal-fired power station next to the existing site on the Hoo Peninsula in Kent.

The strongest tropical storms are becoming even stronger as the world's oceans warm, scientists have confirmed.

27 years ago Thursday, James Hansen and six other NASA atmospheric physicists, published a seminal article in Science, "Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide." The paper has a number of caveats, as befits a major projection before modern climate models [...] But the analysis bears up unbelievably well

Jürgen Scheffran, a research scientist in the Program in Arms Control, Disarmament and International Security and the Center for Advanced BioEnergy Research at Illinois, is among those raising concerns that climate-change-related damage to global ecosystems and the resulting competition for natural resources may increasingly serve as triggers for wars and other conflicts in the future.

you have to look beyond the surface to understand how a body's temperature will change over time

Here are about 2 dozen recent, Web-documented, expert statements from outstanding, world-leading climate change experts, other eminent scientific experts and top scientific organizations with expertise to make authoritative comments about the Climate Emergency and related matters.

As the globe continues to warm, the rainiest parts of the world are very likely to get wetter, according to a new study in Science. Desert dwellers, however, are likely to see what little rain they receive dry up, as the rain becomes even more concentrated in high-precipitation areas.

"The evidence is pretty convincing that the models give a good simulation of climate"

Oysters have been mysteriously dying in the worst crisis to hit France's shellfish industry in 40 years. In the last few days farmers have lost between 40 and 100 percent of their oysters aged one to 2 years old. [...] "A major part of our 2009 production has been wiped out," one of the lake's oyster farmers said, adding that the industry's future "is on the line."

Scientists have been able to say with virtual certainty for the first time that the climate change observed over the past four decades is man made and not the result of natural phenomena.

[...]

Authors of the study, published on Thursday in the peer-review journal Nature, examined a greater range of data than any other study so far. "Changes in natural systems since at least 1970 are occurring in regions of observed temperature increases, and these temperature increases at continental scales cannot be explained by natural climate variations alone," they say.

Contrary to what you may have read on some blogs — we are not entering a global ice age. The world continues to warm even though we had a cold winter thanks mainly to La Niña.

I preferred to do science then communicate with the public after 1988 until 2004. At that time I realize there was a huge gap between what is understood by scientists vs. what is known by public